View full sizeTerry Richard/The OregonianThis Oregon iris, photographed along the Chinook Trail, is a lot prettier than Don Cannard, who is being honored this weekend for founding the Chinook Trail Association.

The Chinook Trail Association is honoring Don Cannard, the man who drove me to the top of Bluff Mountain, kicked me out of the truck and made me walk 30 miles to Vancouver.

Thanks, Don, I enjoyed every step of that trek, except the waist-deep crossing I had to make of Rock Creek just before sunset at camp.

And you forgot to tell me the bridge was out.

That was back in 2005, when the Chinook Trail was granted National Recreation Trail status by the chief of the Forest Service and I became the first-through hiker on that part of the trail.

I'm glad I did it when it was only 30 miles long, instead of the planned 300.

The trail will soon add some distance as ground is broken this year on the start of the Chelatchie Prairie Rail with Trail project, which will extend the trail from my ending point (Lucia Falls, northeast of Battle Ground) to Burnt Creek Bridge Trail in Vancouver.

The trail is a decades' long effort to link existing trails in the Columbia River Gorge via newly constructed trails, from Vancouver to the U.S. 97 bridge on the Washington side and from Portland to Biggs on the Oregon side.

In my book, the landscape it traverses, the Columbia River Gorge, is one of the most beautiful in the lower 48 states. I rate only the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion and Tetons ahead of it. Take that, Mount Rainier.

Sorry, Don, I will be on assignment in Astoria on Sunday. I sure would have liked to make use of one of those "water resources'' at the center to get back at you for making me swim Rock Creek.